We’re beset by an array of natural resource and environmental challenges. They pose a tremendous risk to human prosperity, to world peace, and to the planet itself.

Yet, if we act, these problems are addressable. Throughout history we’ve overcome similar problems, but only when we’ve focused our energies on innovation. For the most valuable resource we have isn’t oil, water, gold, or land – it’s our stockpile of useful ideas, and our continually growing capacity to expand them.

In this remarkable book, Ramez Naam charts a course to supercharge innovation – by changing the rules of our economy – that can lead the whole world to greater wealth and human well-being, even as we dodge looming resource crunches and environmental disasters and reduce our impact on the planet.

comments 4

little things like Kickstarter.com or 3d printing…or paypal or apps for smartphones, or tools like gotomeeting and chrome tools and just letting anyone accept credit cards on their phone (Square) or bitcoin, or a dozen other accellerators. cool!

One can only hope the ignorant anti science mob will somehow awaken and take an interest in the preservation of the planet they inhabit. How this became a political issue is astonishing. It is like mothers defending poison milk.

To be fair, unregulated engineering has created a lot of the mess we are in. If the politicians of the time had pushed Rudolf Diesel and other inventors to greatly reduce the soot output of their inventions we would not be facing this catastrophe.